jumpingfish

The man walked up to the counter at the end of the long, warmly lit room. A couple was sitting in some overstuffed chairs in the corner, but otherwise the place was empty.

The clerks looked up as he approached. They had been talking and stopped as he got near. He smiled, but they just looked at him without returning the favor.

“Well, I’m not coming in for coffee this time,” he said.

This time. It had been many months since he’d been there. He tried not to let it show, but they were still not smiling, and he felt busted.

“I’m curious if you… Do you have any coffee grounds? You see I’m planting strawberries and…”

He felt like a panhandler: Need help. Will work for coffee grounds.

“Actually, we do have grounds,” one of them said. “But there’s this other couple…” and he held up his hands in a what-can-I-do pose.

“Oh I see. No, that’s just okay,” the man said, glad in a way that at least their grounds go to a good home. He smiled as he backed, up waving and then turning to leave.

“Do you want to stop at Starbucks?” his wife asked when he got into the car.

He didn’t want to. Somehow he felt a bit odd about the whole thing. He asked if she would. She said no. Maybe he’d try again on the weekend. The strawberries would have to wait.

“It’s not going anywhere,” he said as he pulled hard on the cord and tied one last knot.

The desk came in parts, and I figured they’d all fit in the back of my little station wagon, but I figured wrong. The guard outside the store offered to help me tie it onto my car rack.

He seemed to know what he was doing. And I keep nylon straps in the car. So I figured between the two of us, we could strap it down securely. But as I watched him tie his knots and pull the cords, I started to shake. Literally, I started to shake. It was dark. It was getting late. I had a long drive ahead of me. With that thing on top of my car? What was I thinking?

“I’m driving home to Austin,” I told him.

“Good luck,” he said as I got into the car.

I was still shaking as I pulled onto the westbound feeder road. As the car got up to 35 miles per hour, the load began to buzz and vibrate. How was I going to make it home? It was now almost 9:00 at night, and I still had over 150 miles to go.

What on earth was I thinking?

I pulled off the road and tightened everything.  His not-going-anywhere knots had already slipped. So I retied them and added more cords and knots of my own, and satisfied that it was finally as secure as I could make it, I pulled back into traffic.

But seriously, what was I thinking?

Minutes later, I pulled into a grocery store and bought some nylon rope: two spools of 100 feet each. And I proceeded to spend the next 45 minutes in the parking lot pulling the 100 feet of one of those spools thru my rank-amateur loops and knots, stopping regularly to untangle the yellow nylon mess lying at my feet.

Oh for heaven’s sake, what was I thinking?

I pulled back onto the road. The highway was still too busy and traffic too fast for me to do anything but drive with the local traffic, going from stoplight to stoplight. If I could just get to the outskirts of Houston on the feeder road, the traffic would surely diminish and I could get onto the freeway.

Red tail lights raced by on the freeway and I chugged along on the feeder road. I drove under the Beltway. I passed Fry Road, which used to be so far out in the middle of nowhere. I kept on going until I was by myself on the feeder road and the highway traffic had thinned. And after a few successful test runs up to 50 mph with no vibrating or buzzing, I got my courage up, seeing that no one was behind me, and I merged onto the Interstate. A drove along at 50, and the few cars that remained barreled by me at 70.

Three hours later, 30 minutes after midnight, I pulled into our driveway with the desktop still strapped firmly to the top of the car. I never got the guts to go faster than 52, and somewhere around Lagrange my gas mileage dropped noticeably when the front of the box split open and the box began gulping the cold night air like a Baleen whale.

It was late, but I was finally home. And I hadn’t hurt anyone. But oh my lord, what was I thinking?

The beauty of [that star] smote his heart as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him.

So says xkcd [here] quoting Tolkien describing Sam looking out on Mordor in The Return of the King. I don’t remember it, but I should.

I need to contemplate on this a bit and go out tonite and gaze up again at Jupiter … if the clouds will only clear.

It’s 5:55 pm, New Year’s Day, just before closing time.

Lane 1

Janie’s face periodically twitches as she scans the merchandise. She isn’t moving particularly fast, and then the phone next to her register rings. She picks up the receiver while she totals up the bill.

“Yes ma’am. We close at 6:00,” she says and hangs up the phone.

“Well they’ll have to get here quickly,” I mumble in a lame attempt at humor.

She doesn’t hear me.

Lane 2

Crystal opens up a register, because Janie’s line is getting very long. A woman checking out in Janie’s line leaves her husband with half their merchandise and takes the rest over to Crystal while the rest of us watch.

She has coupons. 50% off coupons. The kind of coupons that bring people here.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Crystal says to the woman. “You can only use one coupon.”

The woman stares at her briefly and then looks down at the four coupons in her hands (and actually collects a fifth from her husband).  And she looks over at the boxes of candles she’s buying and then up at Crystal.

“Well, can I ring them up on separate orders?” she asks.

“…Sure.”

At The Door

As we leave the store, Sam is pushing in a cart filled with dried flowers. He’s half-way thru the doors, but a woman has stopped him to ask something—a question about the cart or the store or maybe the dried flowers.

“Whatever you like, ma’am…” he says, looking up at us.

She walks past him into the store.

“…I just want to get this stuff put away so that I can go home.”

For the New Year. For tomorrow. For you and for me.

There’s songs to make you smile
There’s songs to make you sad
But with an happy song to sing
It never seems so bad
To me came this melody
So I’ve tried to put in words how I feel
Tomorrow will be for you and me

—Ngiculela, Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life (a really good album to play loudly on the morning of the first day of the year)